Recipe creation

I've read about 14 million recepies. I live too far from the LBHS store to run down and get additions so I have what I have.
In all the recepies for pale ales I see there is a large amount of a base malt with a small amount of crystal and other stuff. Then a variety of hop additions.

I have the following. Brewers malt crystal 40, 60, and 120 Munich malt and wheat. For hops I have simcoe, warrior, and cascade.
I figure I can make my own recepie. Why not? Learn from my mistakes and nows the time to make them.

I'm thinking
12 # brewers malt
.5 each wheat Munich and crystal 20

Hop additions
0.5 warrior at 60,30,15, and flameout
1.5 oz simcoe dry hopped for 7 days.

This is my second all grain brew so feel free to attack my lack of knowledge and recommend an alternative. I'm grinding grains as I type so you may be too late in a couple of hours. It'll be fun either way. Thanks for the tips.

The grain looks good and if you only put in .5# then you could do C40 or 60 and still get good sweetness and a mild increase in srm.

Warrior is my favorite bittering hop but I would add the rest of it at or after 10 min. Also some late cascade is awesome in pale ales imo.

Thanks for the info. I decreased the base by 1 and increased the Munich by the same. Going to crystal 40.

What do you think about simcoe? Seems to be all over the IPA scene now. And it's definitely not cheap.

Expensive = good right. At lease my wife and kiddos think so.

Oh naive young former self you have so much to learn.

You will throw away many gallons of bad beer in your search for the perfect recepie.

Careful with those hops. Bitter beer is good but too much is just too much.

Use a free online recepie calculator.
Most importantly keep it simple. Stick with the basics at first. Nothing wrong with a good single malt single hop.

And for hops, start with the tried and true. The new high alpha aren't for the noob.

Just have fun experiment and enjoy the beer you make along the way. Make sure you write stuff down. It's hard to remember exactly what you put in there after you've had a couple.

Edited to add this: Quit being LAZY. Sanitize everything infections taste like crap.

Sure a SMaASH would actually be a good idea, Isjames. it certainly does teach you a thing or two about brewing. one of my favorite beers I brew is maris otter/citra. its so damn good. Going 2-row/simcoe would make a great pale ale, plus it rhymes.....
If you want to make a grain bill for an ipa, I agree with adding the Munich for color. you could drop the crystal altogether. I find it adds a sweetness that I'm not a fan of. Also, you only need one bittering charge. if you are using warrior, add it at 60. don't worry about 30, and 15. its such a clean hop, so you'll be fine with the one charge. flavor and aroma with cascade and or simcoe. that combo seems interesting..... maybe just dry hop with the simcoe..... you could play around, let us know....

You obviously already brewed this (sorry it didn't turn out the way you'd hoped), but in case you want to try it again, I'd suggest changing up that hopping schedule. The recipe could look something like this:

11 lbs brewer's malt
1.5 lbs Munich malt
0.5 lbs crystal 60

0.5 oz warrior @ 60
0.5 oz cascade @ 15
1.5 oz cascade @ flameout
0.5 oz simcoe @ flameout

0.5 oz simcoe dry hop
1.0 oz cascade dry hop

Something along those lines should yield a decently balanced (but nicely hoppy) pale ale without going overboard on bitterness -- although that's subjective, and also dependent on the AA% of your boil hops.

Even if you don't brew this again, I definitely recommend giving BeerSmith (or a free online equivalent) a try when designing your next recipe. You'll be able to enter all of your parameters and ingredient info and quickly see a rough sketch of what will come out the other end. (For example, if you put in your recipe for a mid-gravity Irish red and see that you have 75 ibus, you will know that you need to do some adjusting instead of going in blind).

lsjames said:

Careful with those hops. Bitter beer is good but too much is just too much.

Click to expand...

Too much is easily rectified: hoppiness fades and the too hoppy beer in January will be just right in April or May.